Licensed radio resources are limited and expensive to develop. Various companies pay a premium to obtain licensed spectrum from the regulatory authorities so that they can provide cellular services to their customers. Unlicensed radio resources on the other hand are cheaper in comparison and the number of devices, e.g., WiFi (e.g., IEEE 802.11 compliant) devices, often tends to be large with the devices being relatively inexpensive in many cases due to the high volume of production.
While WiFi chips tend to be relatively inexpensive, they are designed to operate in particular frequency bands. Licensed frequency bands are normally outside the frequency bands used for WiFi and for which WiFi chipsets are designed.
In order to use licensed frequency bands it is often necessary to use custom equipment and/or chipsets designed for the specific licensed frequency band. Such chipsets can be expensive due, in many cases, to the cost of designing a receiver/transmitter chip for a particular frequency band and what is often a relatively low production volume compared to the more common WiFi chips.
In view of the above discussion it should be appreciated that there is a need for improved methods and/or apparatus which can be used to implement receiver/transmitters and/or other radio communications equipment in a more cost efficient manner than is currently the case where custom chipsets are designed and used for a licensed frequency band.
It would be desirable if some, but not necessarily all embodiments could take advantage of relatively readily available WLAN chips intended to support communications in unlicensed spectrum, for example, IEEE 802.11 WiFi, capable chips, in a hardware and/or cost effective manner to support communications in licensed frequency bands, e.g., outside the normal unlicensed WiFi frequency bands.